Of Uppers and Lowers and Lazy Susans...

Once you've chosen your door style and material, it's time to sit down with a designer and actually plan out your new kitchen. While the designer may not actually sit with you while he/she draws out the plan, very likely they will want to meet face to face to get your impressions of what your new kitchen should be like. If they don't, get another designer immediately. Your input is vital to the successful completion of your kitchen renovation. Some designers will use a questionnaire while others will make copious notes on a rough, hand drawn diagram of your kitchen measurement.

It's at this point that the designer may appear to start speaking in tongues. You will hear terms such as uppers, lowers, easy-reach, corner angle, blind corner and such. Don't despair! With a little preparation you will be able to comprehend the double talk and jump right in!

For the next few articles, I will translate many of the terms that designers use. We'll start with the basics this month, and work our way into some of the more difficult concepts as time goes by.

When you look at your kitchen or the display kitchens in a showroom, they appear to be a monolithic mass. In reality, kitchens these days are a string of smaller cabinets joined together like a bunch of building blocks. In fact, designing a kitchen is not unlike putting together a jigsaw puzzle and, at least for me, it's a whole lot more fun.

Kitchen cabinets have standards that vary little between manufacturers. The boxes, meaning the actual cabinets, come in standard widths and, to a certain extent, standard heights. In 3 inch increments, the cabinets step up in width from as little as 6 inches to as much as 42 inches. Heights are variable, but most lowers are 34 ½ inches high including the toe kick at the bottom. The toe kick is the flat board that runs horizontally along the bottom of your lower cabinets. It's height varies from maker to maker but is generally about 4 inches high.

Uppers, those cabinets on the wall, can range from 12 inches to 42 inches in height. The variance there is to allow cabinets to fit over fridges and stoves and also to go right up to the ceiling in homes with 8 foot ceilings and no bulkhead.

Lowers or base cabinets, are all usually 34 1/2 inches high to allow a finished height of 35 1/4 or so inches. Remember that you will some sort of solid surface material on top of the cabinets

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